sugar, are you rationed?
by thewindwarns
Summary: He doesn't notice the pain until later, but perhaps that came before. Johanna/Finnick WW2!AU, originally written in May 2013.


Title: sugar, are you rationed?  
Fandom: The Hunger Games  
Rating: G  
Words: 678 words  
Characters/Pairings: Johanna/Finnick, references to Finnick/Annie  
Prompt: _Johanna/Finnick, WWII!au: finnick is drafted away from annie to fight on the ground in germany where he meets bitter reluctant army nurse johanna  
_Notes: Vague spoilers for Catching Fire/Mockingjay. Originally posted here for the odds are never in our favor ficathon. I am super rusty and this is very historically inaccurate (or, just super AU), so please bear with me.

They said he was the best swimmer in the state, perfect form and built for speed, bound for greatness at such young an age, but none of that matters when the tanks roll in at night, and Finnick Odair, mouth bloody with fear, forgets to breathe.

* * *

He does nothing but dream. Of painting the fence for his neighbor Auntie Mags, of eating freshly caught fish from the lake, of flashing his dazzling smile and walking head held high through town, straight into the arms of the girl he had told the world he was going to marry.

When he wakes, he finds that he has forgotten her face, her _name_, and the loss of it makes him weep. He doesn't notice the pain until later, but perhaps that came before.

* * *

His mind is less foggy a day, maybe three, later, and it's then that he realizes the fidgety man lying in the bed next to him, one that mutters something about wires and codes and ciphers and battle plans, is someone familiar. Finnick, for what's left of the life in him, can barely get a word in, even in his politest drawl.

It's the nurse that finally asks - _commands_ \- Corporal BT to rest, that reassures him the message was passed on, and as soon as Finnick reaches for the worn photograph that is no longer there, he already remembers that this woman in front of him looks both nothing and too much like his girl back home.

* * *

Time slips by. He doesn't care to know the day nor the hour, though his training - if not his family's storied military career – demands it. The other patients shift around him, through luck or mercy, but she remains constant. She changes his bandages and offers him medicine, and when he asks how much longer he's expected to be there, when he's to be sent back to the front or shipped back home, he is met with silence, left with only a cold gaze in response.

Sergeant Abernathy sits up, the coughs wracking his throat, and tells her congratulations are in order, what with her being the first dame immune to handsome Private Odair's charm.

Finnick knows that's a lie; that truth belongs to the childhood friend he will return to, not to this woman before him with a tongue that is sharp, not sweet, and eyes that are angry, not lively. The drugs loosen his lips, and he wonders aloud what made her become that way, is only vaguely surprised when he hears her answer, voice hoarse with fatigue.

_Sometimes,_ she says, _your family is all gone in a night and you get stuck_.

He, the young man known for his oratory skills, for coaxing compliments even out of the most sour of battle hardened soldiers, can offer no words. She laughs, then, something cutting, and he wonders if that was her intention all along.

* * *

It becomes a routine. He asks her for news and she transforms into somewhat of an actress, finding some tall tale to feed him, stories from a place he's ever only thought of as ground to reclaim on a divided map.

But he knows now what she isn't telling him, what she avoids outright saying with her barbs and retorts and unladylike snorts. His trembling hands, his still blurry vision – things that make it difficult to reclaim the title of best shot in the company – are loud enough.

* * *

He learns things about Jo. She hates to swim, to dress up in finery, to be too long without the vastness of the forest at her back.

He _likes_ things about Jo. She's not afraid to roll her eyes at him, to sigh in exasperation at his dream of living out his days in a fishing boat, to tell him there's a difference between impossible and an aggravatingly slow recovery.

She leaves him some hair ribbons, some small thing she could spare, and tells him to practice. It's a while before he can steady his fingers to form familiar knots, but when he does, she's already on the move, administering to someone who needs it. He leaves it by his pillow, sure of the fact that the next morning she'll say _I told you so_.

* * *

The attack is sudden (it's meant to be), and in the dark, when he reaches for her hand in one steady move, heart beating loudly, drowning out the sound of the planes, she grips it, squeezes back. He feels it, every motion of every finger, of their skin in blistering contact. His chest tightens, but with guilt or panic or relief he cannot decide.


End file.
